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Make It Mindful is a podcast for globally-minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can adapt to an ever-changing world. Hosted by Seth Fleischauer, a former classroom teacher and founder of an international learning company specializing in digital, linguistic, and cultural competencies, the podcast dives into the "why" and "how" behind transformative ideas in education. Each episode features educational changemakers whose insights lead to practical solutions and lasting impact.
Seth (00:02.565)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, the podcast where we explore how to keep schools relevant by looking through the lens of mindfulness and asking the question, what's really worth paying attention to here? I'm your host, Seth Fleishour. In each episode, I interview educational change makers, striving to understand what they do, why it works, and how it can lead to practical, transformative solutions for teaching. This week, my guest is Karen Dudek -Brennan. Karen, welcome. Thank you for being here.
Karen (00:28.846)
Thank you for having me.
Seth (00:30.635)
I'm really excited to dive into what is essentially going to be a part two episode. I talked with Mitch Weathers in our last episode and we talked about executive functioning. He was talking about tier one. So that's like kind of mainstream students and how to support their executive functioning there. Today with you, we are going to talk about tiers two and three, how to support some of those students who need greater layers of support. Before we do that, I'm hoping that you could please introduce yourself to our audience.
Karen (00:44.11)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (00:55.363)
Yeah.
Karen (01:00.996)
Yeah, so I'm Karen Dudek -Branan. And let's see, as far as what I do, so right now I own a company called Dr. Karen LLC, where I provide support to related service providers and special ed teams started off focusing specifically on just supporting speech pathologists because I am a speech pathologist by training. I was in the schools for about 14 years as a school SLP. so
a lot of focus on language and literacy and what therapy looks like when an SLP is working with students on things like language and comprehension, as well as some of the other things that SLPs would do. But also that work really focused on metacognition and a lot of other functional cognitive skills, which also includes executive functioning. But as you probably learned in your conversation with Mitch,
that it's not really just something that is in the SLP scope. It's really something that a lot of the school teams should be focusing on in different ways. So that is why I really expanded to start working with the entire team because it's really something that there needs to be a lot of coaching and collaboration when it comes to putting that support in place. So that's what I do. And I do a lot of
training and consulting for supporting those teams. And then I also have a podcast called de facto leaders, where I talk about language and literacy and executive functioning and all kinds of things relating to education reform. And then I also have a management position at the department of children and family services. those are all, well, not all the things that I do, but a lot of the things. Yeah.
Seth (02:47.439)
Yeah. I was like, could you tell me seven more jobs, please? my goodness. You stay busy. That's great. yeah, it's, it's interesting. I remember being a classroom teacher and having students that were pulled out for speech and. It's embarrassing the limited understanding I had of what they were doing in that room. I, I, I, towards the end of my time with these students, I was beginning to understand that it's not just about.
Karen (02:54.071)
Yes.
Karen (03:00.964)
Mm -hmm.
Seth (03:17.325)
like making your tongue do a certain thing. it is about expression. It's about making what's in your head match what comes out. It's about having agency that comes along with being able to express yourself. And all that stuff really drove home for me when, my son was getting speech services, my son still gets speech services. And, and I realized like how much is going on there. and I'm, and so it makes sense to me that you,
Karen (03:20.302)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (03:26.956)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (03:43.545)
Yeah.
Seth (03:48.183)
have this work in speech pathology, but then really what you're talking about executive functioning, this like overarching, like how am I making sure that all of these gears in the machine are rowing in the same direction and doing what I want them to do? And that's kind of what I understand as executive functioning, right? Like it's like sort of like there's a manager, right? That's like, it's got all these.
Karen (03:52.771)
Yeah.
Karen (04:04.204)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (04:08.727)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm. That's a good way to put it an executive. There you go
Seth (04:13.355)
all these different things. Yeah, right. And is that how you think of executive functioning? what is executive functioning and maybe what do people think it is that it's not, right?
Karen (04:25.709)
Yeah.
So if you Google executive functioning, the definition you'll probably get is something like it is a set of mental processes located in the prefrontal cortex that enables you to engage in goal -directed behavior. So that's kind of the very brief definition of what it is, but it's really, I would say obviously doesn't do it justice because in order to engage in goal -directed behavior,
You have to have all these other things going on. And then when we say goal -directed behavior, people think about the more traditional version of goals. Like I have to, if you're talking about academics, I have to complete this writing assignment. That's a goal that you might have, but your goal might also be, I need to go upstairs and clean my room. I need to make sure that my kids get out the door on time.
and get on the school bus or I am it's yeah yeah yeah huh
Seth (05:28.299)
It's funny, those are the two things I talked to Mitch about. Those two exact things. Having to help my kid keep her room clean and getting my son out the door in time. It's funny.
Karen (05:37.142)
Yep. That is a, a common thing where it's like, everybody get your pants on and get out the door. but another thing could be like, I'm in the lunchroom at school and I need to go figure out how to. Like, and engage in a conversation and figure out who I'm going to sit with, or I might want to make friends and figure out how to have a back and forth with someone. So those are goals too, that you might have. That's a thing that you're trying to accomplish. So.
I think that's the primary thing that people don't realize about executive functioning is that many people think, well, it's organization and time management, which of course it is. But when you apply that in the school setting, then a lot of people start to think, well, it's just like, did you get your assignments turned in? And they think of it in very academic terms, which of course that's part of what it is. If you struggle with executive functioning, yeah, you might have a hard time turning your homework assignments in on time.
The impact is actually much more significant than that. It's much more than time management, even though that is a lot of what it is. so yeah, I'd say that's kind of the superficial understanding that people have. And, and unfortunately what that results in is that when you try to figure out how do I help students who might not have strong executive functioning build those skills, then we're sort of myopic in the way that we address it. Cause it's like, you know, let me,
help you organize your folders and write down things in your assignment book, which again are things that people with good executive functioning skills know how to do, but it doesn't quite get us to the end of, or it doesn't quite help us put all the supports in place if we don't fully understand what we're dealing with.
Seth (07:23.215)
Yeah, I mean, it makes me think about how we're kind of obsessed with data in teaching and, and you have these, these quantitative measures that are the result of a complex process that gets you to the point where you can actually put down your answer. But just like our healthcare system focusing on symptoms rather than causes,
Karen (07:27.436)
Yeah. Yeah.
Karen (07:36.046)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (07:39.49)
Yup.
Seth (07:45.985)
in education, feels like what you're talking about is people being like, okay, you're not, you know, getting this right on your math homework. Like, let me teach you how to do this again, versus like, what are all the other systems that are that need to operate in order to be able to develop your student ness is the word that that Mitch used, like to like to be able to like have the practices to be able to to like, translate what you know into the
Karen (08:07.414)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Seth (08:15.535)
the actual measurable output, right? I do wonder, know, kind of comparing this conversation to the one I had with Mitch, you he was talking about tier one students, you deal with more tier two and three, but tier one is something that you talk about. Can you speak to like, you know, if you're dealing with two tiers, tiers two and three, like why are you talking about tier one, right? Why are you talking about mainstream students when you support special education students?
Karen (08:18.296)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (08:25.517)
Mm -hmm.
Yep. Mm -hmm.
Karen (08:40.59)
So I'd say the biggest reason is that, so, and because a lot of times I am mentoring those people in that related service provider role, the SLP, the social worker, the psychologist. And so they are getting referrals for students and then they might be working with students in a therapy session. And they, in order for that therapy session to really work, there needs to be support outside of the therapy session. It's kind of like, if you go to physical therapy,
they give you exercises to do outside of physical therapy. They might tell you how to modify your environment so that you are appropriately rehabbing or not re -injuring yourself. You have to modify things in your life in order for that therapy to work. You can't just go to therapy because therapy is not magic. So there has to be supports outside the day. And so a lot of the people in the related service provider role, and I would put special ed teachers in here as well.
there needs to be scaffolding in the environment outside of the therapy room. And what happens a lot with some of the related service providers that I work with is they get really frustrated because they're like, there's no generalization when students leave my room and I only have 30 to 40 minutes a week to work on like this endless amount of language and cognitive skills. And I have to make this time count. So I have to figure out.
What exactly do I need to be working on directly versus what should I coach other people to do that to do outside of the room? And also even if I might have time to work on it, there still needs to be support. And so what happens in that scenario is that, you know, an SLP or special ed teacher might go to a general education teacher and it's like, Hey, you've got to do some additional accommodations in your classroom for this student or this group of students.
And it feels like you're dumping more on that teacher's plate, which is already very full. And so that's kind of a, like, it's a really challenging ask for somebody in that related service provider position to be like, here's another thing that you have to do. But if we can put things in tier one in place, thinking about, we're not trying to prevent students from needing tier two and three supports, but what we're trying to do is offer more universal supports that could potentially benefit.
Karen (11:01.526)
everyone in the classroom. And so for some students, it's a nice to have, but for others, it might be a need to have. And it might either make sure that those students who are tier two or three are better supported and are maybe able to be more independent. Maybe they don't need as much, you know, intensive, like as far as the intensive services, maybe we can pull back a little bit, or maybe they're just more successful.
And yes, that sometimes does decrease the number of referrals if you have a robust tier one. So I'm always thinking about that when I'm thinking about tiers two and three, even though that's the people that I am working with are primarily in implementing tiers two and three. So you've got to really think about the big picture and think about where do I fit in this whole ecosystem of support.
Seth (11:49.111)
Yeah, yeah. And it struck me that you were talking about nice to have and need to have, that these are things that at very least benefit many students, right? It's not just about like helping the tiers two and three. It's at very least going to to benefit the tier one students in some kind of way. And I want to dive into some of these benefits. And you shared with me one of your your talks, and I think we can link to it in in the show notes. And there's this slide that is like
Karen (11:58.348)
Yeah. Right.
Karen (12:08.963)
Yeah.
Karen (12:12.814)
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Seth (12:18.563)
Okay, so in the middle, there is there's this
Karen (12:20.642)
Yeah, we can share, I could probably share a PDF too. Maybe we can link to that and the presentation. But anyways, go ahead.
Seth (12:25.229)
Okay, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. Okay, so there's there's there's this section in the middle in red and it says attending, inhibition, working memory, fluency shifting, strategic planning, organization, self monitoring regulation. What are those terms in the middle here?
Karen (12:41.176)
So typically I gave kind of the quick definition of executive functioning. Those are the more, that's more of the expanded version of executive functioning. So again, if you Google like the eight or nine executive functioning skills, you'll get things like attention. So your ability to attend to things, inhibition, your ability to inhibit and withhold when you know that you need to, like to not blurt out in the middle of when somebody's talking to you, working memory, the ability to take information in.
and use it immediately. Strategic planning, organization, the self -monitoring and regulation, being able to evaluate and be aware of your own behaviors and thoughts and your actions and your impact on other people, fluency and shifting. So fluency is just the ability to generate ideas, what we sometimes refer to as ideational fluency. So being able to think of ideas to complete something or to think of a plan B or alternative ways to do something.
shifting to know I'm in the middle of something and I need to adjust because my original plan isn't working. Then so there's some self -evaluation and then there's also task initiation. So knowing how to get started. So being able to put one thing down and then go and do another thing. So those are kind of more the textbook, more technical terms for executive functioning that I've got in the middle there. But the challenge with that is that
Seth (13:58.031)
Got it.
Seth (14:07.013)
Yeah.
Karen (14:09.666)
that gives people an understanding of what executive functioning is. But then usually the question is, okay, so what do I do about it? How do I actually help kids? So yeah, I mean, yeah, that could be a whole conversation, but yeah, yeah, exactly. That's kind of more reactive. know, there's like, it's like, yeah, you don't want students blurting out, but what do they need to know in order to know when is the ideal time to talk or interject? So.
Seth (14:15.848)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, how do I teach inhibition? Don't do that. Stop. Don't do it.
Seth (14:39.247)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so then you have this top row and in the top row, have time perception, self -talk, future pacing, episodic memory and coding. And you have all of those arrows pointing down into those six red terms or seven with task initiation that we just talked about. So what are those purple things that are all leading into what people typically think of as executive functioning?
Karen (14:39.97)
Yeah, that's a problem.
Yeah.
Karen (14:50.574)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (14:58.328)
Yep. Mm -hmm.
Karen (15:08.846)
So I would say all the things that I just described. I mean, that is a complete definition of executive functioning, but what I've done with those five things that you just mentioned, time perception, self -talk, future pacing, episodic memory and encoding is just organize it into five skills to make it easier for people to understand what do I actually do to support students executive functioning and just to frame it a little bit differently in order to.
Seth (15:31.779)
Yes. Yes.
Karen (15:37.066)
really help people understand what executive functioning is, as well as some of the ways that executive functioning challenges or strengths might present. So time perception, typically when you have a hard time with some of those things that I just mentioned under the definition of executive functioning is that it's really hard for you to sense the passage of time or estimate time. So that would be things like, like knowing how long something will take.
And so a lot of times, kids who are struggling with executive functioning, they'll either do one of two things. So they'll like, you'll, you're trying to plan for a task and it's either they'll kind of inflate it. So if it's something they don't like to do, it's like, it's only five minutes and they'll in their heads think it's going to take hours and hours. And so that can cause a lot of stress and resistance and what we might think of as defiant behaviors.
And I mean, I do this all the time. When I have something I don't want to do, it's like, it's actually only going to take five minutes. I do this when I empty my dishwasher. I'm like, seriously, I just need to watch the clock. It's going to take two minutes. So again, that's kind of why sometimes kids, you're like, why are you arguing with me? This argument is longer than the thing would have taken. So that's part of what happens there. But then also you can have the opposite where
Seth (16:47.985)
Hehehehe
Seth (16:56.843)
Yeah.
Karen (17:02.516)
it's something's gonna take way longer than you expected and you don't plan. And that's part of just some of the other skills that I can, you know, can talk about the other five, because they all kind of interrelate. can't really isolate them.
Seth (17:13.239)
Yeah. Yeah. What I think is interesting about what you're saying so far is that like, you know, we think of time management as a skill of executive function functioning, but we don't think about the skill of time perception as something that leads in to the ability to manage your time. Right. It seems very simple when you put it that way and time management is like this big insurmountable issue you're going to be dealing with like your entire life of like how I'm going to optimize my time.
Karen (17:19.918)
Yep.
Mm -hmm.
Karen (17:26.841)
Yep.
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Karen (17:39.779)
Yep.
Seth (17:41.989)
but time perception seems like something that we have. We have a very simple tool. It's called a clock, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Karen (17:47.372)
Yeah, a clock, an analog clock where you can see and that's why it's like digital, like all this technology is great and you could do so much with it. But sometimes you want to go back to the basics and just have a clock that you can see. Yeah. Yeah.
Seth (18:03.951)
Yeah. And you recommended that to me in one of our previous conversations and I got an analog clock and I have it up on the wall and it's my son's responsibility to do certain things by certain times in the morning now. And he's like, he loves it. He's like on it. I w I was, yeah, I was really, I was, I, you know, and I look, you're a professional. I expected what you said was going to be most likely correct, but you know, things work for some kids and not some other kids, right? Yeah.
Karen (18:15.638)
Mm -hmm. I love, I'm so glad to hear that.
Karen (18:29.316)
Right, yeah, well, and there's like an implementation. You gotta troubleshoot.
Seth (18:33.275)
But it's funny because he picked the exact same clock that's on the room in his classroom and on the wall in his classroom. And he was like, I want that clock. And so we picked that clock. We ordered it on Amazon. It was there the next day. And, and it's like, you know, by seven 37, you gotta have your teeth brushed. And he's like, I'm on it, you know, running out, like checking the clock, like while he's brushing his teeth, like, is it 37 yet? Right. And just that ownership over cause like so much for him is like, is like,
Karen (18:38.592)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Karen (18:55.822)
Yeah.
Mm That's huge.
Seth (19:01.871)
control, right? Like I and I say that as my biggest struggle with him is that like, sometimes I need to be in control, right? Like issues of safety, right? Like, like he just needs to listen to me sometimes, but he's always, he always wants to be that the person who's making decisions. And I'm sure all teachers have had that kid in their class, right? Where like, like they need to like feel that sense of ownership. And I, and I was so simple that addition of like,
Karen (19:20.052)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Seth (19:27.781)
Hey, you gotta do it by this time at like, I don't know, gamify, like why does that work? Why does that work?
Karen (19:32.172)
Yeah. Yeah, like with the visual. Yeah.
Seth (19:36.515)
Yeah, yeah, like why does the clock such a powerful tool?
Karen (19:40.196)
Well, I think part of it is that you can physically, like you can see the space on the clock and that does help with time perception. It gives you something like when I'm thinking about, if somebody says this is gonna take 15 minutes, I can visualize in my head like that little, you know, the quarter of a clock. And if I look at a digital clock, I can still see that in my head because I built that skill up over time.
But if kids don't have that skill yet, the numbers are not going to be meaningful. They're not going to immediately make that visual association to the 15 minutes. But also what you have is one of the other skills that is in the five. I'm going to kind of skip ahead, which is episodic memory. So your ability to think back on past situations and then apply it to the current situation. And so there's a lot of things working here where you're like that whole experience.
Like what you were saying, what you were hearing, what you were seeing, like that image in your head and all of those experiences, you have that to apply to this new situation. So that's why I know when I go downstairs that, you know, there's dishes in the sink. I have a past experience of me like knowing that this is only going to take two minutes and the feeling I got afterwards where it was like, it's done. And now I have a nice clean sink and I can like, can see all of that in my head.
And then also if somebody says, this is only going to take five minutes, I can think on an experience that took only five minutes and apply that to another situation and kind of be like, okay, it's going to be like this other situation. It's not so bad. But if you can't, if you don't have episodic memory or you don't have a strong episodic memory, it's like everything's going to feel so scary and overwhelming and you're not going to want to do it. So that's part of why it's so powerful is that it goes together.
It gives you something to kind of attach to those visuals. Mm -hmm. It is, yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Seth (21:32.537)
Yeah.
Yeah, and the, the, yeah, the attachment is that visual piece, right? Because otherwise time is a fairly abstract concept. Some might even say a construct. and, and, you, if you have the clock, then you can, you can act it like aids in the episodic memory because now it's a visual memory as well. Right. That's great. Let's talk about some of these other ones.
Karen (21:52.139)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, so there's, can go, we could do future pacing, because that's another one that goes with episodic memory. They're not, I wouldn't say they're the opposite, but there's, so you've got to be able to think back from the past and apply it to the future. And then you also need to be able to think into the future. And so when you're thinking into the future, you're doing a number of different things. You might be engaging in self -talk, which is another one of those skills where you're kind of talking to yourself thinking like, Hmm, I've got a
you know, go to the gas station and then I need to go to the grocery store and you're kind of talking yourself through the steps. But then you're also visualizing yourself through those steps at the same time that you're using language. So you're thinking about the end goal and you're thinking about the steps to get to the end goal. And so that you can kind of see this pattern and see yourself doing all of those things. And if you've done them successfully in the past and you're using your episodic memory to envision this end goal and envision
yourself doing it successfully, then you can self -motivate and get yourself through all of those tasks and plan and know where to start it and know what to do. So that's where, again, executive functioning being about goal -directed behavior, you're able to visualize those steps, you're able to see the end, and that helps you to persevere through things that might be challenging or boring or just something that maybe you don't feel like doing.
And then I think another part of it is that if you have an experience that maybe is new, but it's kind of like something you did before, you have the ability to, to again, motivate yourself and get yourself through it. So it can, can really do a lot with just your confidence, your success and completing the task, as well as just your ability to be open to trying new experiences. Because again, you have those past experiences and skills and confidence to draw on.
Karen (23:50.926)
So I think we've got self -talk and future pacing that I kind of got into there. Yeah.
Seth (23:56.696)
And so how do you help a student who kind of who doesn't initially see that, right? Who's like, I don't want to do the new thing. You're like the story I'm telling myself is that I can't do it or that I don't want to do it. It's going to be boring. It's going to, it's not going to help me. Like these skills of episodic menomery and future pacing should be the antidote to that. But like, how do you get a student from not exercising those skills to exercising those skills?
Karen (24:13.166)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (24:25.806)
So there's a lot of different things. So some of them are proactive and some of them are, I don't want to say reactive, but like you have to expect that kids are sometimes, sometimes it's going to be hard. Like there's going to be times when they're not going to know what to do. They're going to have to like sit with the problem and figure it out on their own. So having clear expectations about what's going to happen upfront.
So here are your choices, here's what's going to happen, if, know, like the different scenarios. So, and even just helping them to understand consequences. So I like to do what I refer to as priming or front loading, where if you're going into a situation that you know is going to be challenging, if you know that a student has struggled in the past, doing some priming or front loading. And so how that could look is just,
having a conversation with the student and saying like, okay, like we're about to go do this writing assignment and here's what's going to happen. Or even doing like a mini version of that to prime and front load and teach some skills and more of a safe, lower risk situation or maybe a condensed version of it to kind of work up to that more challenging situation. I'd say in the schools, one of the things that comes up a lot with the
professionals that I work with is that writing assignments are really difficult for students with executive functioning challenges. And what happens a lot is that we get really fixated on the end goal. it's like, teachers are like, well, they've got to finish this writing assignment right now. And you're focused on just, they finish this worksheet? And then sometimes students either don't finish it. And then, you know, maybe they get in trouble or something like that, or
maybe there's a teaching assistant working with the student kind of pulling the answers out for students and almost doing the work for them. And so it's like, we're so fixated on the end goal that it's like, you know what, like maybe we teach the student a strategy and it's okay, they don't finish their writing assignment. So I would say the front loading is really important. And I do have some specific strategies that I teach that also like help students.
Karen (26:44.516)
how do you actually plan for a writing assignment? Like how do you actually plan for this? And then also I have some strategies that I use to help students think through things a little bit and kind of catch some of their distortions that they might have. Like we all experience cognitive distortions. We all sometimes stress ourselves out over things. So teaching students some of those things, like asking them.
Like on a scale of one to 10, how do you, how hard do you think this is going to be? how do you know? Like, how do know that's going to be hard? So, you know, just kind of going through some of those things with them. And so I have a process that I follow where I walk through some of those things and that kind of helps with some of that self -talk as well, because there's self -talk for strategy and then there's self -talk for confidence and self -esteem and kind of building your belief about yourself. So I would.
Seth (27:37.722)
Hmm.
Karen (27:41.782)
embed some of that work into that task. So that's part of it. There's a lot also, a lot more to it, obviously.
Seth (27:49.049)
Yeah, gosh, mean, there's, yeah, there's so much and it like, you know, the things that I'm thinking about are like, again, going back to like our fixation with data and how it like, I've always talked about it being this like narrow slice of achievement that it measures. And I think these discussions that I've been having recently with you and with Mitch about executive functioning, like is, is making that sliver see seem even more narrow. And it's just, it's frustrating to the extent that
Karen (27:57.913)
Yeah.
Karen (28:03.054)
Yeah.
Karen (28:14.456)
Yeah.
Seth (28:19.075)
These processes, which are the processes that are going to get you future success are not so easily measured and we can only measure proxies for them. And in that way, we often go without addressing them. And it also made me think about how essential IEPs are, right? Like, because with an IEP, that's where you get the space to say, we are teaching this process and it's not about the end result yet.
Karen (28:28.312)
Mm -hmm.
Karen (28:38.808)
Yeah.
Seth (28:47.803)
Right? Like I think about my, my son and his speech stuff and like, you know, they're basically like, yeah, we're going to get him to, you know, not have this like lisp, but like there are 19 steps, maybe that's an exaggeration, seven steps. There are seven steps before he's going to be able to do that in everyday speech. You know, the first, like the first one is he's, he's going to be able to do it, you know, with a single word. And then he's going to be able to do it with multiple words in a sentence. And then he's going, you know, like all of these things are going to build up, build up to like me actually noticing.
Karen (28:47.961)
Yeah.
Karen (29:00.398)
Mm
Seth (29:16.877)
that he has improved. that speaks to just the challenge of assessment, right? The challenge of whenever you decide to measure something, that thing becomes very important. And when you decide to measure things that are very easily measurable because you want to standardize things, then you're getting into a situation where you're missing out on all of these incredibly important functions.
Karen (29:44.878)
Yeah.
Seth (29:45.253)
but I'll get off my soapbox. Encoding was the last one up here. We got to self -talk.
Karen (29:48.428)
Yeah, and I do want to talk about assessment because I get asked about assessment all the time, but encoding is just when you're taking those visuals and you're putting language to the visuals and that helps with self -talk. So you have to be able to see yourself doing the steps, but then you also have to be able to explain the steps and use language. So that back and forth between visuals and languages is encoding. So yeah, there's a lot of...
Seth (30:05.84)
Hmm.
Karen (30:14.136)
ways that the term encoding is used, but that's how I'm using it in this context. But it's really interesting that you bring up assessment because I am asked about assessment for language and executive functioning all the time. Now it is challenging to assess language. I would say it's even more challenging to assess executive functioning. And a lot of the people on the related service provider team, they're asked to give a diagnosis, which I believe a diagnosis can be very powerful.
but it's really all about what do you make that diagnosis mean? Do you think it means I can't do anything and you know, or do you think it means this is information about me that I can use to figure out what kind of help I need? Like, so that's, it is very important to have assessments, but a lot of times people are really stuck on the standard score, which is not like, it's not like it's not valuable, but
when you're thinking about executive functioning, you really have to have a portfolio assessment. So the way that I recommend people who are in that role where they're assessing it are using some standardized assessments that you can do individually, but knowing that that is a sliver, as you said, but also looking at things like work samples. There are some surveys that you can do that are decent. Again, it's your...
You're looking at one sliver, but you can look at, there's some survey assessments that you can do where you're asking people for input on how a student is functioning and you're putting it in like a Likert scale or some kind of a score. And then one other thing that I do is the strategy that I mentioned where I am front loading and modeling self -talk and teaching kids to come up with a strategy for completing a task.
Things like that that are interventions can actually be diagnostic and you can take data on how well the student responds to a strategy that you teach them. And that can be part of a diagnostic assessment. And I think people don't always realize that. And that gives you richer information than just the test. So I say you take all of these things and they all have benefits. The standardized tests have benefits in that there's the reliability and the validity and the psychometric.
Karen (32:38.542)
properties of the assessment, but they're limited in that they're very structured and you don't get the nuance of functional situations. And the other things that I mentioned, the more dynamic assessment doesn't have the reliability and the validity and the consistency across examiners, but it gives you more information. So when you use all of those things together with all of their strengths and weaknesses, you have something way more robust because it kind of balances, they all balance each other out.
Seth (33:07.533)
Yes, yeah. What a diplomatic answer.
Karen (33:08.43)
So.
Yeah, yeah, but again, it's like I'm like, stop focusing on the score. It's like there's more to it than that, you know.
Seth (33:19.491)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think that that's the issue, right, is the myopic focus on those standardized, you know, when it becomes the here on end all, that's the problem. It's not that they're not valuable.
Karen (33:24.535)
Yeah.
Karen (33:29.398)
And I get why people understand data. Like, again, I'm working at the state level. Like, you can't get a snapshot of an entire state or district. It's really hard. like, there's, I understand why we need that, but we have to have another process to look deeper as well.
Seth (33:48.015)
Yeah. Cause ultimately, you know, we are a country of what, a hundred million students. many, know, there's a lot of people and there are certain policies. Yeah. There's certain policies that come down from the top and you want to know if those are working or not. Right. And how, how are you going to know if they're working? Yeah. It's there's a saying in Chinese it's a one, the Pigu one, the now die, which means a change your butt, change your head. And this happened to me as I like was a classroom teacher and was like, you know, bah humbug for assessments. Like what a waste of time.
Karen (33:52.79)
Yeah, yeah, you need the snapshot.
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Karen (34:09.24)
Mm -hmm.
Seth (34:16.931)
And then like, as I moved up, the managerial chain and started to be like, well, I need to know if the decisions I'm making from this position are actually having the impact that they need to have. I need that data that I complained about when I was a classroom teacher. You know, it's yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. okay. So, so we have.
Karen (34:21.325)
Yeah, it's...
Karen (34:25.355)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Karen (34:32.002)
I know. It's so hard.
Seth (34:38.211)
Up at the top, going back to this graphic, right up at the top, have time perception, self -talk, future pacing, episodic memory, encoding. These are the skills, actual skills that you can practice that then impact these components of executive functioning, which is attending our attention, inhibition, working memory, fluency and shifting, strategic planning and organization, self -monitoring regulation. And then you have a bottom row.
Karen (34:40.28)
Yes.
Karen (34:45.58)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Karen (35:00.696)
Mm -hmm. Yep.
Seth (35:01.883)
Where there are arrows pointing from those red terms, the executive functioning terms down into social, academic, vocational and functional. What's that bottom row? What are you saying down there?
Karen (35:10.894)
Mm -hmm.
But I'm saying that all of all of these executive functioning skills are those are the areas of your life that they're going to impact. So your ability to engage in self talk and your ability to use information from past experiences and your working memory and your it's going to impact your ability to interact with other people and how well you're able to understand how you're coming across and just
Understand reciprocity and even just be able to process all that language that's going on in a conversation with someone so it impacts you socially And then also, you know, you can even think about some of those time management things where that can have an impact on your relationships as well so I think what when people are talking about social skills, it's really Executive functioning skills applied to social situations is how I often explain it
Seth (36:09.273)
Hmm.
Karen (36:11.084)
especially for some of the practitioners who are doing social skills groups, I think it reframes how they can think about their intervention. then academic, obviously all the different things that I mentioned, I gave a lot of academic examples, our ability to plan ahead into the future and be able to self -evaluate is obviously going to impact us academically, both independent academic tasks like something like writing, but then also being able to
participate in a dialogue in a classroom. Vocational, this one is huge. mean, just some of the things that you have to do in order to be a good employee or be self -employed or, you again, be able to earn income. There's just so many impacts. That could be an entire episode. And then functional is just some of those basic day -to -day things like, do you know how to...
plan ahead for your groceries for the week. So all those different day -to -day things. And I think that I say functional there because a lot of times it can really carry over to what's going on at home and parents might be seeing something very different than what's happening at school. And that could be just depending on how structured the home is and how the student is impacted at school. So it's really important to think about all these areas when we think about executive functioning.
not just the academic, even though the academic can certainly have an impact on the vocational. So, and some of the other things as well.
Seth (37:42.01)
Yeah.
All right. Well, if people were not convinced 37 minutes ago that this stuff is incredibly important, I think that list of basically all of life, which is impacted by, yeah, yeah. That is impacted by these skills. I think they, they understand that it is now, for, for teachers who are wondering like, okay, you know, how do I, this is a lot, right? These are a lot of things that I would love to do well. but I'm only going to have time to this year.
Karen (37:52.63)
Yeah, that is, it is all of life.
Karen (38:06.617)
Yeah.
Karen (38:14.198)
Mm
Seth (38:14.435)
to improve on some of them. What are like the lowest hanging fruit, the highest impact, lowest investment kind of things that people can do to help support the executive functioning, I'm gonna say of themselves and of their students.
Karen (38:27.126)
Mm -hmm. So I would say that one thing that you can start thinking about right now is self -talk, how you use it, and how you model it for your students. So that's something that you can easily just, you don't need any stuff for it. You can just start, you know, think, attention to how you're planning and how you're talking to yourself. And when you're around students,
or your own kids, you can just start saying that out loud. So that's one easy thing you can do. Also, the visuals is really important. And a lot of teachers are pretty good about visuals. But I think, you know, again, adding things like analog clocks, or even if you have students that, you know, sometimes if a visual is up at the front of the room and it's written versus pictures and it's not specifically designed for a student.
then that can be a little bit hard for them to use. So maybe you make that a little bit more individualized, but I think it is really important to have those rules and those visuals just around the classroom as well, because it helps to communicate the expectations that you have for the classroom. Because communicating those expectations also helps with that strategic planning, because it helps kids to understand where am I going? What does success look like?
Because part of that, again, the future pacing is where am I going? What is my end goal? What does it look like to do whatever it is that I'm trying to accomplish? So those are some quick things. And I'm happy to link to some other resources where people can get more specifics as well.
Seth (40:12.623)
Yeah, you've got a ton of resources. I'm seeing two websites, drkarenspeech .com and drkarendudickbrannon .com. Is that the same website or those different?
Karen (40:18.19)
Yes.
Karen (40:23.726)
They're different. So the drkarendudekbrannan .com is where I have my podcast episodes for de facto leaders. And then the drkarenspeech .com is the site that I originally had all my speech pathology resources, which is I still have there, but I also have my executive functioning resources there as well. And I have my blog there where I have some written content over there. So there's a little bit of both the
Podcast one is more focused on the executive functioning and leadership, but that you can you can find me both places.
Seth (41:03.051)
Well, good luck to you getting at least three more jobs and two more websites to post all the amazing work that you're doing. Thank you so much for coming on here for breaking this down for me. It's funny, I've never done a podcast like built around a visual. And I think it speaks to like the richness of the visual that we were able to like say as much as we were about it. You know, it just seems like such important stuff. it's it's so often that
Karen (41:06.884)
Yeah.
Karen (41:18.625)
Yeah.
Karen (41:22.146)
Mm -hmm.
Seth (41:30.243)
I meet people and it's like, there's this really important thing that we need to incorporate into education and how are we going to do that? And I just feel like with executive functioning, like if you're going to pick one thing, you know, like it just seems like something that we all could know more about and could recognize the processes as they're happening, could self -talk more. It's going to help us.
Karen (41:51.457)
Mm
Seth (41:58.687)
function better, it's going to help our students function better. So I invite you to dive into some of the amazing resources that Dr. Karen has. I have done so and have started to incorporate it into my thinking around how I'm working with my students and with my kids, my kids at home. And it's so far so good. So thank you so much for being here, for sharing this with us.
To our listeners if you would like to support the podcast, please do leave a rating or review tell a friend follow us Thank you as always to our editor Lucas Salazar and remember if you would like to bring positive change to education We must first make it mindful. See you next time